Hello everyone and welcome to the Stephen King cast one man's musings on the works of Stephen King.

Each week I review one entry in the bibliography of Stephen King and chronological order of publication,

and this week I'm turning my attention to a novel that I feel is a precursor to Stephen King's current phase,

in which he places the emphasis not on the fright, but on the deeper musings on the machinery of life.

What I believe is his existential period.

Such novels include Dumakie, Lise's story, and most recently revival, but I believe that this thread began with 1998's publication of the haunting ghost story, Bag of Bones.

Bag of Bones was coming hot on the heels of some larger-than-life concepts that had begun with insomnia,

and then followed up with Rose Matter, the Green Mile, Desperation, the Regulators, and Wizarding Glass.

Oras, Little Doctors, Flying Rocking Chairs, Spider Women in Paintings,

Talking Bulls, Circus Mice, Cartoons Coming to Life, Possessing Spirits, The Recreation of Emerald City.

These are just a few of the ideas that populated these novels.

So when Bag of Bones came out, I expected similarly charged concepts.

And I did not get that with Bag of Bones.

Whereas in the previous novels, he went big. Here he goes small.

This is a very introspective novel that doesn't place the focus on the supernatural,

but on the natural.

In this case, the loss of a loved one and the attempt to pick up the pieces of your life

once that person has moved on.

Yeah, there's a ghost story, but the ghost story takes second place to the story of a man trying to live his life.

In many ways, this feels like the companion piece to Lise's story. Here we have the death of a

writer who loses his wife, and in Lise's story, it's the tale of a wife mourning the death

of her writer husband. Both stories take place, sorry, both

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